Build Your Own Guitar

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as a wanna-be luthier, these articles will certainly pique your interest.

1. The Reesely Strat

This page describes how I built an electric guitar, it has a bunch of pictures and a fairly detailed explanation of
the steps. If you have the usual power tools and some experience in woodworking, this page should get you up and running. This is the third guitar I’ve built, this is one is done in the style of a Fender Stratocaster – but with several enhancements I wanted.

2. The IKEA Guitar

This is one of the most interesting guitars I ever built and it is also one of the best. The action is great, the tone is unbelievable, the neck is super fast, tuning stability is as good as it gets. In short, everything just worked out great on this guitar. This amazingly figured top is from Ikea Furnishings. I bought one of their unfinished end tables for $15 and I can get three guitar tops from it. What a shame that they would use such amazing “tone-wood” for their cheap furniture. Its a sacrilege.

3. The Instructables Guitar

I have built several electric guitars over the years and through trial and error have learned many helpful tips that anyone who might want to tackle this sort of project needs to know before starting out. This kind of thing does require some wood working skill and also requires some specific tools as well but not all the fancy stuff that a guitar manufacture has.

Finally, if you still want a custom guitar, but would rather someone else build it for you, then I would recommend custom guitars from First Act. Using their on-line flash builder app, you can design everything from the wood and shape used on the neck, to the colour and finish of the body.